Maine Facing Elderly Boom, with Few Young People to Support Them

[Frodo]

This is why we need more people having children as well as more immigrants to stave off this future:

‘This will be catastrophic’: Maine families face elder boom, worker shortage in preview of nation’s future

(…) Across Maine, families like the Flahertys are being hammered by two slow-moving demographic forces – the growth of the retirement population and a simultaneous decline in young workers – that have been exacerbated by a national worker shortage pushing up the cost of labor. The unemployment rate in Maine is 3.2 percent, below the national average of 3.7 percent.

The disconnect between Maine’s aging population and its need for young workers to care for that population is expected to be mirrored in states throughout the country over the coming decade, demographic experts say. And that’s especially true in states with populations with fewer immigrants, who are disproportionately represented in many occupations serving the elderly, statistics show.

“We have added an entire generation since we first put the safety net in place but with no plan whatsoever for how to support them,” said Ai-jen Poo, co-director of Caring Across Generations, which advocates for long-term care. “As the oldest state, Maine is the tip of the spear – but it foreshadows what is to come for the entire country.”

[Person Man]

I just hope this isn't some way to convince people to vote for treating themselves like breeding cattle. Poland has policies like that. They don't work. Romania's worked for a little while and then they stopped working.

[Dr. Arch]

We're not making enough to buy houses comfortably, and we're expected to have children too? Hah

[Kingpoleon]

A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Elderly People From Being a Burden to Their Children, Neighbors, or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Publick:

America is fundamentally endangered by a growing average age. We must take a three prong approach of: encouraging immigration of foreigners under 25; encouraging young couples to have more children with tax and economic incentives; and cannibalizing the elderly on a sliding scale, starting at the age of sixty.

[Person Man]

A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Elderly People From Being a Burden to Their Children, Neighbors, or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Publick:

America is fundamentally endangered by a growing average age. We must take a three prong approach of: encouraging immigration of foreigners under 25; encouraging young couples to have more children with tax and economic incentives; and cannibalizing the elderly on a sliding scale, starting at the age of sixty.

Questions:
What are the parameters and critical values on this "sliding scale"?
Who would want to eat them?

[Lambsbread]

Well I already wanted to move to Maine but if they offer tax incentives to move there, that’d be cool too

[YE]

Why are so many retirees flocking to Maine anyway given its climate?

[ProudModerate2]

The problem many rural-ish states are having, is that many of the young are leaving their small towns, and moving to more urbanized areas. They see via various internet/social media, the "glamor and excitement" with living in larger, metropolitan cities and want to get-out-of-Dodge from their boring community.

[GeorgiaModerate]

If the U.S. birth rate remains low and immigration continues to be discouraged, this is going to be the case in the whole country eventually.

[Indy Texas]

Why are so many retirees flocking to Maine anyway given its climate?

If you're from someplace like Chicago or Buffalo, the Maine coast is "temperate" to you.

Rural areas go into a death spiral from two trends:

1. Outflow of young, working age people seeking job opportunities elsewhere.

2. Inflow of old, nonworking people who are on a fixed income and attracted to the low housing costs.

You can't have a viable city/community unless you have people at every stage of life. If you just have a bunch of old mouths to feed and no one to (literally or financially) feed them, you've got a problem.

[T'Chenka]

If only we could bring young and middle aged people to Maine from other countries and offer them a pathway to citozenship. It's too bad that the only immigrants that want to come are from $h!th0le countries.

[Mopsus]

If only we could bring young and middle aged people to Maine from other countries and offer them a pathway to citozenship. It's too bad that the only immigrants that want to come are from $h!th0le countries.

Regardless of which countries they come from, replacing the bottom half of the age pyramid with immigrants only prolongs the inevitable demographic implosion. We have to figure out something else.

[Progressive Pessimist]

This is Stephen King's newest horror novel.

[RI]

If only we could bring young and middle aged people to Maine from other countries and offer them a pathway to citozenship. It's too bad that the only immigrants that want to come are from $h!th0le countries.

Regardless of which countries they come from, replacing the bottom half of the age pyramid with immigrants only prolongs the inevitable demographic implosion. We have to figure out something else.

Yep, we either need to dramatically restructure entitlements and discard many growth-based measures of economic success, or we need to address the strong anti-natalist incentives in our economy and society.

[dead0man]

I like how we're supposed to worry about over population and under population at the same time...make up your mind Chicken Little!

[Kingpoleon]

A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Elderly People From Being a Burden to Their Children, Neighbors, or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Publick:

America is fundamentally endangered by a growing average age. We must take a three prong approach of: encouraging immigration of foreigners under 25; encouraging young couples to have more children with tax and economic incentives; and cannibalizing the elderly on a sliding scale, starting at the age of sixty.

Questions:
What are the parameters and critical values on this "sliding scale"?
Who would want to eat them?

Standard diversified lottery draw. We eat 5% of the original number for the first ten years, then make it to where they’ll all be eaten by 104, with 75% gone by age 71.

Nobody. We’ll call it beef/ham/fish/poultry or whatever. They can’t tell the difference.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I like how we're supposed to worry about over population and under population at the same time...make up your mind Chicken Little!

America's population needs to grow and the world's needs to shrink. Pretty straightforward.

[Grassroots]

The thing is, the media and the elite don't want the former solution, they just want the latter.

[Cassandra]

I like how we're supposed to worry about over population and under population at the same time...make up your mind Chicken Little!

America's population needs to grow and the world's needs to shrink. Pretty straightforward.

Some real MAGA energy in this post.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I like how we're supposed to worry about over population and under population at the same time...make up your mind Chicken Little!

America's population needs to grow and the world's needs to shrink. Pretty straightforward.

Some real MAGA energy in this post.

Not really. The world doesn't have the biocapacity to support it's current population. Nonetheless, US cities and infrastructure are overbuilt, and our institutions are objectively more capable of dealing with high populations than those of other countries. You can't seriously think two billion people in South Asia is better for the environment, the economy, and for human well being than 1 billion in America and 1 billion in South Asia.

[JA]

There are a couple of key problems that are apparent in this problem.

1. America doesn't have any kind of organized, non-profit long-term elderly care services available, nor is there a nationwide network of providers and support staff that can be tapped into for struggling areas. These kinds of facilities will only be created when they are sufficiently profitable; considering the location, type of work, and meager pay offered to the most needed of these industry workers, is it a surprise that there is such a shortage? It's not profitable enough to increase benefits and pay to attract talent, so these places lose staff and decline. We need a comprehensive, nationally organized plan to address this problem; both lack of coordination and the profit-motive are hindering this.

2. America doesn't have policies in place to support aspiring families. Long work hours, minimal vacation time, insufficient pay, overpriced housing, expensive healthcare, no paid guaranteed maternal or paternal leave, astronomical childcare costs; with those conditions, how do you really expect people to have more children? If they must struggle to just afford a studio apartment or bedroom in a house with roommates while working over 40 hours per week, then how will they have children and all the expenses associated with them? American policy is extremely anti-natalist.

[Person Man]

There are a couple of key problems that are apparent in this problem.

1. America doesn't have any kind of organized, non-profit long-term elderly care services available, nor is there a nationwide network of providers and support staff that can be tapped into for struggling areas. These kinds of facilities will only be created when they are sufficiently profitable; considering the location, type of work, and meager pay offered to the most needed of these industry workers, is it a surprise that there is such a shortage? It's not profitable enough to increase benefits and pay to attract talent, so these places lose staff and decline. We need a comprehensive, nationally organized plan to address this problem; both lack of coordination and the profit-motive are hindering this.

2. America doesn't have policies in place to support aspiring families. Long work hours, minimal vacation time, insufficient pay, overpriced housing, expensive healthcare, no paid guaranteed maternal or paternal leave, astronomical childcare costs; with those conditions, how do you really expect people to have more children? If they must struggle to just afford a studio apartment or bedroom in a house with roommates while working over 40 hours per week, then how will they have children and all the expenses associated with them? American policy is extremely anti-natalist.

Bingo. Old people and babies don't have any money and as long as people accept job offers at $45,000 a year instead of holding out for $75,000 a year, they won't ever have enough money to move into a house or at least a two bedroom apartment!

[Tintrlvr]

Why are so many retirees flocking to Maine anyway given its climate?

Mostly, we’re talking about Mainers aging in place. Like West Virginia, Maine has had a stagnant economy for a long time, so a lot of young people leave, but the elderly are left behind. In addition, the birth rate is persistently well below replacement, and the lagging economy combined with cold weather and lack of urban centers (even Portland is under 100k people) means very few immigrants, with many that did come being from refugee resettlement programs that have been cut off in recent years.

Coastal Maine is quite beautiful and definitely a regional summer vacation spot in the Northeast, so you do get some retirees from the Boston area and a smattering from the rest of the Northeast, but not many; it’s not a major retirement destination. There would be essentially zero retirees from Chicago or Buffalo, unlike someone else’s suggestion.